About the role
Are you interested in furthering your career, and excited about helping to make a difference by problem solving and using your creativity? Then we would like to hear from you. We are looking for team players with enthusiasm and a ‘can do, will do’ attitude to continually provide and improve the service to our customers.
We are offering a full time, 37 hour post, supporting the Family Safeguarding Teams in Huntingdonshire. This is an exciting opportunity in our business support team whose role it is to provide administrative support to our Children’s Social Care teams and their ongoing support to children and young people and their families.
As we offer a hybrid approach to working, this will be a mixture of office and home based/remote working. There may be the need to travel for meetings/training occasionally as part of this role.
Flexibility in hours for this post may be considered, together with part time and job share opportunities. The salary will be offered at Scale 4, SCPs 7 to 11 (£22,369 - £24,054 pro rata)
Take a look at the benefits we have to offer and the attached Job Description and Person Specification, for more details:
- 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays
- Membership of Local Government Pension Scheme - an excellent index-linked, defined benefit pension scheme, including life assurance benefits.
- Outstanding occupational, sick, maternity/paternity, and shared parental leave schemes – well above the statutory minimum
- Generous annual leave entitlement increasing with length of service and ability to buy more.
- Flexible and agile working patterns that will achieve a successful work and life balance
- A full training and development programme.
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Cambridgeshire Rewards Staff Discount Scheme.
This is an exciting opportunity to gain experience within the Local Authority and develop knowledge and understanding of Children's Services.
If you are interested in this opportunity or have some questions, please contact:
Liz Kilby – Senior Business Officer, Liz.kilby@cambridgeshire.gov.uk - 01480 379749
Duncan Routledge - Business Development Coordinator, Duncan.routledge@cambridgeshire.gov.uk - 07880500486
The closing date for applications is midnight on 4 September 2023. Interviews will be on 13 September 2023 in Huntingdon.
Please evidence on your supporting statement how you meet the essential criteria of the person specification.
We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we believe benefits our employees, the organisation, and our communities.
What will you be doing?
We support two Family Safeguarding teams with around 6 practitioners per team. Each Business Officer is responsible for their own Family Safeguarding team, however, all of us know each other’s work so we can support and assist all our team members as needed.
These are some of the things we may do in a day:
- Answer phone calls from colleagues, service users or other professionals. Some calls we can answer and help with ourselves, others may need signposting elsewhere.
- Management of our shared team inbox – all requests for support from our teams come to this inbox, so it is essential that it is monitored constantly, and urgent tasks are dealt with quickly.
- Other meetings we support include Public Law Outline reviews, which are attended by social care practitioners, family members and legal representatives. These meetings must be recorded accurately as they are part of the legal process that can lead to change for the children and families in our care.
- We might need to book accommodation for a parent visiting their child under a Supervised Contact Order, or perhaps a taxi or train journey.
- We issue subsistence cash to some service users, so we might be going to the bank to withdraw a sum of money to do this task. We would be logging what is issued against authorisation forms and cash books to ensure correct and proper financial compliance.
- We provide statistical data for Heads of Service and to support Ofsted visits.
- We produce new documents and spreadsheets for colleagues.
- We undertake regular training to ensure our practice and knowledge is up to date.
- We work as part of a supportive team who have a great sense of humour.
- We all get 1-1 support in supervisions from line managers.
- The very nature of Safeguarding work means the environment can be very fast paced and we often have to review and change meetings or events/provision booked in for the teams to accommodate the current situations being dealt with.
One of this role’s main tasks is as a meeting facilitator for case supervisions. These meetings are held to oversee the management of the cases our teams are working and are a critical part of the Family Safeguarding model. Business Officers are an integral part of this process and hold several specific tasks. These include managing the team diaries and organising monthly supervision meetings dependent on size of caseload and complexity of cases; understanding the pressures of the team to ensure the meetings are held at the most appropriate time; minuting the meetings directly onto our bespoke case management system and ensuring all follow up tasks are completed.
About you
You will need a good working knowledge of all Windows & Microsoft packages (including Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and the Internet) and experience of using client databases.
You should be self-motivated and have excellent organisational skills alongside the ability to manage your own workload, prioritise and forward plan. You will be adaptable and flexible, have transferable skills and a willingness to learn new systems and new ways of doing things.
You will work as part of a busy team so must possess good interpersonal and communication skills. You will need to work on your own initiative, keep calm under pressure and be able to work to tight deadlines. You should have a methodical and concise approach to tasks and the ability to prioritise workloads effectively.
Previous experience is not essential as we offer development with training and ongoing support.
Our benefits
We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits:
- Flexible working
- Flexible Bank Holidays
- A comprehensive wellbeing package
- Our Cambs Rewards employee discounts
- A comprehensive pension scheme.
- IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network.
- Camweb our staff intranet helping to keep you informed
- An employee recognition scheme
About us
Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes.
Our four values are central to our culture, driving everything we do.
We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we believe benefits our employees, the organisation and our communities.
Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion.
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